The "little shoemaker" Mr. Allen refers to while reading the newspaper is Thomas Hardy, who was tried for sedition in London in 1794 for leading a parliamentary reform movement.
The The striped muslin day dress worn by Helen Fraser (Mrs. Morland) at Fullerton is the same costume worn by Kate Ashfield (Ella, the Worrell's maid) in Princess Caraboo (1994), Toni Collette (Harriet Smith) wears while reading Mr. Elton's charade, Sophia Myles (Susan Price) at Portsmouth in Mansfield Park (1999), and Charity Wakefield (Marianne Dashwood) wears when Edward calls at Mrs. Jennings' London house in Sense & Sensibility (2008).
Herbert Kretzmer in the Daily Mail said the 24-year-old Schlesinger "plays the girl with a pleasing, persuasive simplicity, eyes rounded and mouth slightly agape. . . ."
Rosalie Horner in the Daily Mail heralded Schlesinger's "huge blue eyes," praising the show itself as "a masterpiece of film-making."
Northanger Abbey is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by the English author Jane Austen. Although the title page is dated 1818 and it was published posthumously in 1817 with Persuasion, Northanger Abbey was completed in 1803, making it the first of Austen's novels to be completed in full.